Jan 27 10 ways brands can use Vine

Twitter introduced a video service last week called Vine. It enables you to create a six second video and share it with your social network.
It has huge potential as a means of storytelling for communication, marketing and public relations. Brands such as Gap, The Daily Beast, NBC News and Urban Outfitters have been quick to jump on board.

The app is only available on iOS at the moment. There’s no news of when other flavours such Android will be available but according to Twitter’s Vice President of Product, Michael Sippey they are in the works.

How to use Vine
The Vine app feels a lot like Instagram but for video content rather than images. It strips back the process of producing a video to the absolute basics.

You construct a video by pointing your device at the subject that you want to shoot and capture a clip by holding your finger on the screen.

You can shoot a single video clip for six seconds or build up a series of short shots. Once you’re done – and it only takes six seconds remember – you hit publish and share the video with your Facebook or Twitter network.

Videos play back in a loop. Audio is turned off by default because if you have cut together a series of scenes it’s an audio mess and doesn’t make any sense.

Content and storytelling
I’ve played with the service for the last few days. It’s delightful because it removes the complexity of video production enabling you to focus on your content and storytelling.

“Posts on Vine are about abbreviation – the shortened form of something larger. They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life,” said Dom Hofmann, general manager, Vine.

A note of caution: we’ve been here before. Video sharing services aren’t new to the social web. But the functionality of Vine’s predecessors hasn’t been stripped to the extent of Vine, and none has had the backing of one of the major social networks such as Twitter.

Opportunity for communicators
Vine will generate a wave of creativity across the social web as communicators road test the app in the coming days and weeks. Here are a few ways that it might be used.

Messages – Vine is to video what a tweet is to text. Can you convey your message in six seconds?